Hi Guys,

Chad, I use the same "subscribe to this thread" feature that Mike does. Scroll down to the bottom of this page and you'll see it in blue letters. Then when someone writes to this thread, you'll get an email from FTE! Pretty cool. I only subscribe to a couple of threads at a time so I don't get bombed with emails.

Mike, I can't believe I didn't congratulate you on your new little one. I thought I'd had fun before we had kids. Now I know what fun is!!

Chad, don't worry about the cleanliness of the block. I scrubbed like a monkey on that thing before I took it to Rob. When I gave it to him he said, "Wow, that's clean!" I scrubbed the whole thing with wire brushes (by hand and cordless drill) with Berryman Parts cleaner from a coffee can. I just dipped and brushed, dipped and brushed. I then went over the whole thing with carb cleaner and a toothbrush. I was going to take it to a car wash, but Rob said, "Don't worry about it".

As for the condition when I got it back, I was glad a wrenchhead friend of mine warned me, "Don't get too excited, they just look like cast iron when they come out of the tank". I'm glad he told me that, 'cause I was ready for that "just hottanked, sandblasted and machined "gotta wear shades" shine". That's not what it looked like. It's very clean. Not shiny and smooth.

The good news is the block magnafluxed fine. It's good to go for up to .060 over. The bad news is it has a lot of taper to the bore. It was worn .009 on top and .005 at the bottom. Rob and Steve Christ's "Big Block" book both say .005 is the upper limit of rebuilding without machining the bore. So.... there goes the faint glimmer of hope I had for putting this all together again at a minimal cost.

So, we'll see how to proceed. None of the options I worked out with Rob are cheap, but I like the way he thinks. I know I could find lots of places that will do the work cheaper than Blue Oval, but I don't think I'd find many that would do it better.

I would like to meet you guys and show you where my project stands. I'm on the South end of Denver (I-25 and Colorado).

Spudco